


Red String

by thehoyden



Category: Smallville
Genre: First Time, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-04-21
Updated: 2003-04-21
Packaged: 2017-11-01 11:04:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/355954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thehoyden/pseuds/thehoyden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dish gloves, destiny, and weird answering machine messages: one of these is not like the others.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red String

Chloe was going to die a slow, painful death. 

Clark wasn't really sure he wanted to know exactly what Chloe had consumed last night while writing her midterm (due at 8 am, naturally), but whatever it had been, the kitchen in their apartment really smelled now. 

In fact, the entire kitchen was just depressing. He passed Chloe's bedroom on the way to his own, her door open just enough for him to see her sprawled out on her bed, still in yesterday's clothes and fast asleep. 

Clark had already been in class for three hours, and turned in his paper on East Asian mythology, so it seemed cosmically unfair that Chloe was still sleeping. Part of him wanted to make a racket and wake her up, just for spite, as she so often seemed to do to him whenever he was crashing after a last-minute project. 

Clark knew he wouldn't, though, and heaved a long-suffering sigh as he returned to the kitchen. After fruitless glaring at the dishes in the sink, he noticed a post-it on the fridge, of the shockingly pink Chloe-variety. 

_Lex called_. 

Clark frowned and studied it. Lex called? Lex called and what, exactly? Call him back? How had Lex sounded on the phone? Was Lex okay? Was he still in Hong Kong? Would the cell number he had still work? 

Forget the dishes and strange late-night food creations. He wanted to wake Chloe up so he could grill her about this mysterious message. He and Lex talked on the phone every Sunday, and it was something Clark really looked forward to. But why was Lex calling in the middle of the week? He sighed, and realized that he wasn't going to wake Chloe up to ask - he was going to do the dishes. It was profoundly not his turn, but he knew he couldn't just leave them. 

Sometime later, he paused in his industrious scrubbing of the cast-iron skillet upon hearing the answering machine click on. Chloe must've had the ringer turned off. _Hi!_ Chloe's taped voice said cheerfully. _You've reached the Big Gay Apartment. We're at class, or comatose, or maybe out on a hot date - well, not Clark._

The muffled sounds of Clark's protest had actually recorded quite clearly. 

_Leave a message after the beep!_

"This message is for Clark..." a familiar smooth voice started to say. 

Clark wrestled with the yellow dish gloves and won before diving for the cordless phone. "Hello?" he said, cursing himself for sounding breathless and dorky all at once. 

"Clark," Lex said warmly, sounding relieved. "Tell me, which apartment are you in, again?" 

"3C," Clark told him, feeling a little bewildered. 

"Excellent. Knock knock, Clark." 

Clark's eyes widened. Feeling like a complete fool, he hesitantly opened the door. He quickly concluded one thing. 

Six years had passed, and Lex still made him feel like he was the only person in the entire world. At the age of twenty-two, he realized what his fifteen-year-old self couldn't quite acknowledge - namely, that when he and Lex were in the same room, there was an inexorable pull between them. As if East Asian legends were true, and they really were connected by the red string of destiny. 

"Red string?" Lex repeated, looking somewhat amused. 

Clark blushed as he realized he'd actually said that aloud, and then watched the most unexpectedly sweet smile transform Lex's face. And then cursed himself again for giant dorkhood, because Lex had spent the last six years traveling and doing business in Tokyo, Seoul, and Hong Kong, and somewhere along the way he had to have learned something about it. 

"Bound together by fate from birth?" Lex prodded, taking two steps into Clark's space. 

Clark's mouth wasn't working. Actually, neither was his brain. When his only contact with Lex was regular emails and weekly phone calls, he'd forgotten how Lex smelled, how he moved, how he seemed to devour Clark's soul with the sheer enormity of his presence. 

"I think we've had this destiny discussion before, haven't we?" Lex said softly. 

"Y-yes?" Clark stammered. 

Lex smiled, no longer sweet but definitively predatory. "There's a slight difference, though." 

Clark was watching Lex's lips move, and was mildly alarmed to feel his body moving forward without his express permission. "Hmmm?" he responded belatedly. 

Lex's hand came up to rest on Clark's shoulder. "Well, for starters, you were underage and not so admittedly gay." 

"Why should that make any difference?" Clark asked, hardly daring to hope. 

"Well, it'll make it easier to woo you." 

" _Woo?_ " Clark repeated incredulously, his eyes wide. "Have you been reading Austen again?" 

Lex kissed him, which effectively stalled any further commentary on Lex's reading choices. Lex kissed like a warped image of a medieval saint - adoring, devoted, and promising heaven while tempting to sin. 

"Does this mean you're in want of a wife?" Clark gasped, after they broke apart for air. 

Lex began to not-so-subtly herd him in the direction of bedroom. "Not a wife. You." His lips brushed over Clark's earlobe before settling to suck on the sensitive skin underneath. 

"Oh," Clark said faintly, somehow mastering the coordination to open his bedroom door while not letting go of Lex. 

"I brought presents," Lex murmured in between kisses. "Things I saw and thought of you. Wasn't sure before that I should give them to you." 

"Lex, I don't need - " 

"I had to have them shipped here. In many boxes," Lex continued, maneuvering them to sit down on the bed. 

"Why?" 

Lex's hands suddenly cupped his face. "Because I thought of you a lot. Every day." 

Clark felt his face flush under Lex's fingertips. "I thought of you, too." He paused. "Do you think we should talk about this?" Please say no, he thought fervently. 

"We've been talking about it for six years. Besides, you're the one who brought up destiny. Tell me you're not absolutely sure about this." 

"I'm sure," Clark said firmly, pulling Lex down on top of him. 

"Is Chloe here?" Lex asked him, wonderful hands sliding underneath Clark's shirt. 

Clark considered that for all of two seconds before divesting Lex of his tie. "If she is, I think it's about time she woke up." 


End file.
